


with my heart in my mouth all my words are still

by persephassax



Category: Midnight Special (2016)
Genre: (Not between characters), Alton is a plot device, F/M, Gen, Introspection, Lucas doesn't believe, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Roy definitely believes, Sad Gay!Lucas, Sarah probably deserved better, Unrequited Love, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic, feral dad!Roy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:26:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23299285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephassax/pseuds/persephassax
Summary: Lucas doesn't have to believe in the Great Beyond to let Roy and Alton across his threashold. He doesn't need to believe in a shattering beautiful truth. Lucas already believed in Roy once, and he never stopped.
Relationships: Lucas/Roy Tomlin, Roy Tomlin/Sarah Tomlin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	with my heart in my mouth all my words are still

**Author's Note:**

> Mild warnings for implied past child abuse (of now-adult characters), implied past homophobia (not by any main characters), and implied sexual content. And lots of quasi-poetic philosophical musing.
> 
> Feel free to reach out with questions.

Lucas knows that it isn't love that ties Roy and Sarah together. At least, not love for one another. Not romantic love. It's all right there when he watches them. They don't hold each other, they don't linger over one another; they orbit Alton, locked into a pattern that keeps them in proximity with one another, but they never fight against Alton's gravity to try and reach one another. 

Sarah is a beautiful woman, he can see why Roy got tangled up in her in the first place. The Ranch, the believing: none of that ever made any sense to Lucas. He always knew that Roy was looking for something, something more than the simple fact of reality to keep him going. Lucas didn't have it in him to believe. It wasn't just a matter of his nature, though he doubts he could have believed much, seeing as he still felt the need to become a trooper. A world that needs protecting from men like him isn't one guided by something unknowable, or at least not anything worth knowing. But there'd never been any room in his life for believing. There'd been his dad, the way everything had been growing up, his house, and always, through it all there'd been Roy; the reason Lucas had never been able to believe, had never needed to believe. 

But Roy had needed more out of this life than that. He'd always been looking for the answers. Always certain that there was something more to creation than the dust and heat of West Texas, more than their podunk town, more than Lucas and honest work and trying to do right by others. There was a time, once, when Lucas would have given anything and everything to be the answer to all Roy's questions. But now, with the answer standing right in front of him, he knows he'd never have been enough. 

Sarah loves Alton, just as much as Roy does, though not with the same vicious ferocity. Lucas had a job where he carried a gun everyday, trained and knowing full well he might have to use it. But he's a trooper because it's the best way he knows how to protect people. He wants to make sure that people are safe, that parents get home to their kids at night and that no one raises a hand against those that can't defend themselves. The way Roy is with Alton is something altogether different. When he opened that door to find Roy standing in the other side, Alton's small body cradled against his chest, Lucas saw the fire in his eyes and knew that no man or beast, no fence nor barricade would keep Roy from doing what that boy, his son, required. 

It was that certainty, before he looked deep into Alton's eyes and saw all that lay beyond the veil of the mean, bland world he'd lived in all his life, that made him open the door wide and let Roy in. He wasn't afraid of Roy, more afraid for him, afraid of what might happen should he allow Roy to embark on this crusade alone, afraid of what Roy might do, but more afraid of what might be done to him. 

West Texas ain't an easy place to grow up for a boy like Roy had been when they were young. Tall, lanky, quiet, with big eyes that seemed to take everything in, and smiles that were rare to encounter. Lucas had spent all his life learning the hard way how he was supposed to act. Weren't no preference nor behavior his father didn't see as something a good lashing couldn't correct. The most important lesson he every taught Lucas was that some things can't ever change; but everything can be hidden away and buried where no one has to see it. He never could successfully get those hidden things past Roy, though. That implacable gaze underscored by thin, uninflected lips cut right through him, showing off every damn thing he'd every tried to shut away from everyone else. He learned to love it, and then to hate it, and then to grieve and cherish whatever remnants remained.

It used to be that in the hot West Texas summers, with their shirts sticking to sweaty skin and the sounds of crickets and cicadas buzzing through the dry grass, that Roy could pry every one of Lucas' stupid little secrets open; little prizes in the Advent calendar counting down to the day he left to join the Ranch. In return, Lucas got to peer through the windows into the dark, immaculate depths of Roy's soul, lit with the burning light of his passion, his desire, his quest for that higher, greater something. He got to keep for himself the memories of the dips and swells of hot, tanned skin, salty and golden from the sun, the contrast with the sweet chill behind Roy's lips, the shape of his tongue, the hard lines of his runner's body; this was the secret, the truth which Lucas devoted himself to. The unerring, unfaltering belief in Roy which made him open the door all the way, to let his guiding light and _his_ savior cross his threshold. 

Lucas doesn't know what to make of what he saw in the burning, unbearable light which possesses Alton's body. He said it felt like comfort, like being seen and accepted and loved, completely. But that isn't exactly true, or rather, that's only the part of it. It felt like all of those things, but it also felt like finally understanding what it is that everyone is looking for, what people hope to find in the Word, in the Truth, in Nirvana. Lucas had never imagined before that moment -- before Alton took his hand and showed him, before that moment he sat across from the boy, Roy hovering pride and fear warring in the lines on his face, and gazed into the abyss which was also a vaulted, dizzing ceiling, into an eternity of light and weightless, buoying brightness -- what it was to believe in something greater, truer, more beautiful than what exists in this world. 

In the house where they have to leave in a rush, after Roy's old ex-Rancher acquaintance tears the cardboard from the window to see that Beyond again, Lucas thinks that he's better off for never having searched for it. What Alton showed him was shattering, transformative, both annihilating and reconstitutive; but it didn't change anything. Lucas has already built the life he planned to live, and even the moment when he opened his door to see Roy and Alton on the otherside had been prepared and accounted for, helping them already a given. Lucas feels like the only one who remembers that they can't follow where Alton is going; that light, that beauty is not meant for any of them. 

Both Sarah and Roy understand that in their own way, he thinks. Both are prepared to give their child up to a world into which they cannot follow. Sarah has already given Alton up once, chosen between two unbearable realities. Lucas thinks that Roy has prepared his sacrifice like a man going to war; he has not thought about life beyond giving Alton what he needs, even at the expense of everything he is. Maybe that's what Lucas already knew, remembered it from the way that Roy walked away that first time, to join life on the Ranch, singleminded and without thought to what he was to leave behind. Roy has never been one to do things by halfs and giving Alton the world beyond this one would be no different. That's why he needs Lucas; someone has to remember that this world, the one of flesh and blood and dirt, will still carry on existing even after Alton has left it behind. 

Sarah gives them space, when they finally make it to her house. Roy won't stray too far from Alton, ready at every moment to swoop in and save him from the dangers that linger around him, both within and without. But Roy's spent a lifetime with Alton just out of reach, the space for Sarah to remind herself what her son feels like when she holds him is easy enough to give. 

He watches the three of them from down the hall and for a moment he can see it. He can see Roy smiling at Alton as he comes back from school chattering about science class and the upcoming field trip, bring Sarah flowers just to watch her smile, Alton scrunching his nose up as Roy kisses Sarah in a sun filled kitchen. The three of them together, a family; affectionate, happy, in love. But the mirage fades into an after image, a mocking superimposition, the happy ghosts of something that was never possible catching and tearing on the sharp edges of reality.

"You make a beautiful family," he says later, and means it. 

Waiting with Sarah for Alton and Roy to return from their escape he isn't quite as careful, shaken by their quick split, uncomfortable at the proximity of the yard and a half of distance between him and the woman Roy loved enough to have a child with. 

"Good people die believin' in stuff every day," he tells her, knowing it to be true in his bones. Knowing it from having seen it. Knowing it from having followed Roy this far across the country. Sarah believed once as well. She and Roy met at the Ranch, believing in something, together. He does his best to eat his words, but some things can't be taken back after they've been let out.

But Lucas knows what he believes in; maybe it isn't the Ranch's promise land, nor Sarah's faith in everything working out, nor Alton's dazzling light, nor Roy's fatherly dedication. But he believes in something, it beats in his chest, every minute of the day.

At every stop they make, hiding from the daylight behind cardboard and curtains, Lucas stays awake, watching the windows and the door, his gun in easy reach. It's easy enough to offer, to do, he's never been able to be that thing that Roy was looking for, but this, protecting them, protecting Alton, protecting Roy is almost enough to make the taste of old failure fade away.

**Author's Note:**

> I finally saw Midnight Special and I have A Lot of Feelings. I don't think I actually _liked_ the movie, tbh. But I was also deeply enamoured of Joel Edgerton's cuddly dangerous gruff Lucas and feral dangerous dad Michael Shannon. Honestly, the only thing I came out of that movie knowing for an absolute fact was that 1. I am deeply concerned about the message of that film and 2. Lucas and Roy were totally a thing back when they were growing up and Lucas is Definitely Not Over It. 
> 
> I did appreciate that the movie was singularly dedicated to making all 6'4" and 180 lbs of Adam Driver look smol. 
> 
> To all my Kylux (and adjascent pairings) friends, I'm sorry that this story doesn't feature Paul Sevier. I invite everyone to please join me in weeping about these Very American Sad Dads.


End file.
